Currently, agricultural extension system in Iran is experiencing a radical change to make extension system more effective in helping farmers to be more productive, profitable and sustainable. Basic principles for reinventing agricultural extension are: 1) Focusing on small farmers and enhancing the access to public and private services in agriculture; 2) Starting from grass root level and people/farmer's needs/issues and their demands; 3) Learning from past experiences and develop our own methodology and model of extension; 4) Benefiting from emerging paradigm, latest theories and experiences to inform our collective action. Iranian agricultural extension system has been formulated 8 master strategies to reinforce the changes in the delivery extension services: 1) Restructuring the extension system; 2) Renovation of all extension sites for optimized exploitation and management of facilities and capacities; 3) Human resource development through promotion of training scales and employment of skilled staff at institutional levels; 4) Reorganization of extension media aiming at reconsideration in their context and connection to the clientele; 5) Networking agricultural knowledge and information system to enjoy information and communication technology and further dissemination in the sector; 6) Restructuring and developing of production cooperatives to identify the bottlenecks and formulate new policies for improvement; 7) Studying and assessing farming systems to discover the ongoing status at all sub-sectors concerned; 8) Reorganizing and expansion of non-governmental institutions in agriculture sector. The most important new programs of extension services are: Integrated Participatory Crop Management (IPCM), Comprehensive Production and Extension Model Sites (CPEM) and Learning Focus Sites (LFS). In all of these activities, extension administration tries to delivery innovation and empowers the small farmer in order to increase the agricultural productivity. Mostly these programs are Local community based, farmers-led and village based, capacity building activities, environmental friendly, multi- stakeholder activities, Integrated Management system, impact assessment, and innovative platform activities
For better efforts in development of the farming community, agricultural extension services have always focused on farmers’ resources, activities and capabilities. And this has proved to be an important standing point in the rice growing state Tripura of North East...
Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactively connected with other partners, such as advisory organizations, local governments, universities, and non-farm organizations. Given the importance assigned to the agricultural innovation by EU resorting...
The present case study investigated a policy-induced agricultural innovation network in Brandenburg. It focussed on three major questions: 1) What are features of the network that enhanced farmers’ ability to innovate in cooperation with other actors?; 2) What influencing factors encouraged the farmers’...
In this paper, presented at the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop: "Generating spaces for innovation in agricultural and rural development") in 2016, the authors assess the integration of new entrants to small-scale farming into agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), in...
A bilateral project between the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development (SDC) and the Nepalese government, which ran from 2016 to 2020 and covered 61 municipalities in provinces 1, 3 (Bagmati) and 6 (Karnali), with technical support from the Swiss...
